THE CERTAINTY OF CHRISTIAN HOPE

Building on the definition of hope in the previous post Balthasar goes on to express how our human nature cannot allow us certainty that one meets the necessary conditions of Christian hope.

"...it is only in so far as the “person” – or the I who goes beyond itself and toward all men – finds itself involved the going beyond ­­– or, in other words, in loving the neighbor in the way that

God who “makes his sun to rise … on the just and the unjust”, loves him – that it sees itself as being included in hope …. And also as one who must always ask himself whether he achieves this going beyond in reality and not just apparently, decisively and not just irresolutely, irrevocably and not just for a time. Even if someone could know himself as being in the “certainty” inherent in Christian hope, he still does not know whether he will transgress against love and thereby also forfeit the certainty of hope. It is therefore indispensable that every individual Christian be confronted, in the greatest seriousness, with the possibility of his becoming lost."

Dare We Hope, p.64, 2014 by Ignatius Press

DARE WE HOPE

 

Gabriel Marcel

 

Dare We Hope, "That All Men Be Saved" is the title of an essay by Hans Urs von   Balthasar. Balthasar draws a definition of hope from philosopher and Catholic   convert, Gabriel Marcel. It distinguishes the virtue of Hope from a mere wish. 

“Hope is essentially the open readiness of a soul  that has involved itself sufficiently,

at the inward level, with the experience of communion, to assume the mental attitude

 --- over and beyond mere will and cognition ---

in which it posits the living everlastingness that lends that experience both its security and pledge.”

Dare We Hope, p.62, 2014 by Ignatius Press